A June 2 article in Politico, “Belgian EU Presidency Urges Governments to Move Toward Muzzling Hungary,” reports that Belgium, currently rotating president of Council of the EU, is taking the extraordinary step of urging EU governments to move ahead with a procedure to deprive Hungary—which will takes over the EU Presidency in July—of its voting rights in the EU. This may deprive Hungary (which borders Ukraine, and has loudly complained of the Kyiv regime’s oppression of Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarians) of its right to exercise the EU Presidency.
“We have a Europe that is making difficult headway, with unfortunately some states—one state in particular—increasingly adopting a transactional, blocking and veto attitude,” Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib told Politico. She appears to be acting for several other EU countries, which are members of and influenced by NATO.
Lahbib advocated advancing the EU’s Article 7 censure procedure against Hungary, whose Prime Minister is Viktor Orbán—an extreme move that can result in a country having its voting rights suspended. “I think we need to have the courage to make decisions: go right to the end of Article 7, activate Article 7 right to the end, which provides for the end of the right of veto,” she said.
Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó expressed concerns about Belgium’s intentions to suppress pro-peace forces by silencing and excluding Hungary from EU decision-making. He emphasized the critical nature of the June 6-9 European Parliament elections, suggesting that such a significant decision should not precede Hungarian public input. He accused Brussels (which is also the headquarters of both the EU and of NATO) of being in a “state of war-madness” and attempting to eliminate opposition to war.
“Brussels is now trying to remove the last obstacle to war,” he stated, highlighting the urgency of the situation with the elections just days away. He warned of a looming “Third World War” if the current trajectory continues unchecked. “There is a curfew panic, six days to go until the European elections, six days to go before people pull the emergency brake on the pro-war train,” Szijjártó declared, urging European citizens to use their vote as a means to halt the pro-war agenda. He further accused the Belgian Foreign Minister of attempting “to silence peace advocates by moving forward with Article 7.”
On June 1, several hundred thousand Hungarians participated in a demonstration in Budapest, saying no to the British-U.S.-EU-NATO proxy war in Ukraine. Prime Minister Orbán in his address to the rally said that giving up on peace meant “choosing to die for the cause of Ukraine,” and “we do not want to shed blood for Ukraine, we will not go to war.”
The other EU-NATO neighbor of Ukraine is Slovakia, who’s Prime Minister Robert Fico is close to Orbán, and was shot and nearly killed on Mary 15 by a pro-war nut case.
